Culture is an essential component and a key factor for the effective delivery of the core mission of the Council of Europe to promote human rights, the practice of democracy and the rule of law.

Promoting culture as the "soul of democracy" means advocating strong cultural policies and governance aimed at transparency, access and participation, and respect for identity and diversity, intercultural dialogue and cultural rights – as the basis for respectful and tolerant living together in an ever more complex world.
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Digitisation is profoundly changing our cultural experience, not only in terms of new technology-based access, production and dissemination, but also in terms of participation and creation, and learning and partaking in a knowledge society.

CultureWatchEurope promotes culture as "the soul of
democracy", facilitating strong governance through
combined access to the Council of Europe's information
tools that generate, improve and follow-up policy
standards. It also offers a platform for exchange
towards prospective analysis and forward thinking.

The Council of Europe’s flagship programme of cultural policy reviews assesses policies in member states at the request of the Government/Minister of Culture to
offering comprehensive analysis and advice, geared
to optimising policy for the greatest benefit of its country's citizens.

In the context of rapid globalisation and digitalisation of cultural production and distribution, it
is key that policy tools put in place by European countries are effective and adequate in delivering the objectives of diversity and creativity.

The European Convention on Protection of the Audiovisual Heritage and its Protocol introduce systematic storage of audiovisual works in film archives, where the latest conservation and restoration technology can be used for long-term prevention of deterioration.

A joint action between the Council of Europe and the European Union, aimed at setting up a European Academic Network on Romani Studies, concluded on a programme of a two-year duration (June 2011 – May 2013).

A joint project aims at replicating in 5 Roma settlements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", Hungary and Slovenia the model successfully implemented in Kamenci (Slovenia) where the Roma inhabitants have been supported in
setting up a multidimensional cultural enterprise within
their village.

is a means to raise awareness among the public and private decision-makers about the benefits of diversity and to provide a large number of examples of how organisations, businesses and cities which have realised these benefits by creating innovative products, services, ideas and initiatives.

C4I – Communication for Integration project (implemented by the Council of Europe
and funded by and the European Commission) aims to fight against misconceptions and prejudices, rumours and stereotypes by using viral information techniques to provide evidence-based answers to common misconceptions.

DELI, co-funded by the Council of Europe and the European Integration Fund, fosters more efficient local policies in support of migrant-owned SMEs and migrant entrepreneurship as part of wider diversity and inclusion policies.

This joint Coe/EU initiative's overriding objective is to consider diversity and non discrimination as ongoing angles of media coverage. To do so, MEDIANE offers the media and their professionals the opportunity of committing themselves to sharing professional practices, either during European or thematic encounters or through European Exchanges.

The Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes seeks to reinforce the potential of Cultural Routes for cultural co-operation, sustainable territorial development and social cohesion, with a particular focus on themes of symbolic importance for European unity, history, culture and values and the discovery of less well-known destinations.